BlizzCon 2016: Warcraft Interviews and Streams Roundup

During BlizzCon there were many panels and events going on at once, including some of our favorite community figures streaming at the convention itself! It was hard to watch everything going on at once, so we are trying to help the community out by compiling interviews and streams that occurred at BlizzCon in one location; if you find additional streams or interviews let us know and we will add them! Make sure to check out Wowhead's BlizzCon Interview as well.

BlizzCon 2016 Contest

Every comment you leave on any BlizzCon 2016 post is entering you to win prizes like a Murlockostüm. As long as you don't spam, each comment only increases your chances to win by giving you another entry. Read more here--we have several awesome prizes to give out all weekend.

Blizzard Interviews with Streamers

Hibernate might be an ability that is returning, along with Shroud of Concealment.

The current level of class iteration won’t continue at the same level of intensity throughout the expansion; we’re at the start and things will smooth out over time.

Overall philosophy for 7.1.5 talent revamp is to buff the underperforming talents. Buffs may be number tweaks, design tweaks, replacements. Number tweaks are the most common because they are the easiest.

Survival Hunters are a bit lacking in unique utility. Not a perfect idea on how to fix this quite yet. In addition, the fantasy of a Survival Hunter may not have been sold well at launch.

Survival will have way better traps than BM/MM traps. One idea: if traps persist for some amount of time, without being triggered, then they become empowered. When they are next triggered, they become way stronger.

Elemental Shaman have many cookie-cutter talents; future talent changes will try to balance this better and make specs feels less pigeonholed.

Expect number changes for nearly every spec, and a fair number of talents having design changes and even replacements. Eg four talents across two rows being changed for Mages.

Boomkins feel on the weaker side — their gameplay is solid, but they could use some number tweaking.

Plans to improve legendaries that feel bad to acquire, like Sephuz' Geheimnis. The jewelry legendaries also have issues where not all specs like the secondary stats.

Verzweifeltes Gebet is going baseline, and that talent is replaced with a utility one. Schattenbündnis also never quite worked out; trying out a design that doesn’t replace Machtwort: Glanz. Trying to provide an option for players who need an instant heal when Atonement isn’t set up.

Marksmanship Hunters may get some base talent changes in 7.1.5: the Patient Sniper row. Feels required to make the spec fun, a lot more fun than the baseline version. So baseline Marks gameplay will be more heavily inspired by that talent.

Seelendieb is going baseline for Warlocks: the replacement talent is single-target focused.

Kniesehne is back on the GCD because the idea is that the actions you take, which should have an impact, are on the GCD. The first attempt at making Hamstring feel more powerful on the GCD was not up to par, it needs further iterations.

Brewmasters are a bit unintuitive to play. During the beta a long blue post was made explaining their play style, but it is still not obvious and there is work to be done.

Swifty's stream took place before the "Legion: What's New" panel so the developers were a bit quiet about 7.2 announcements. Eg--Legion flying was asked about, but the developers couldn't reveal the exact details of Broken Isles Pathfinder and the class mounts.

One fun tidbit is that the raid and encounter team is fairly large: it's up to around 14 staff.

The Black Market Auction House purposely has no Legion gear; players shouldn't feel compelled to buy current gear. It feels good to keep "fun" items on the BMAH.

Happy with the experience most groups are having in Emerald Nightmare, but gathering feedback and making improvements to future raids like Trial of Valor.

At the end of the stream, Swifty caught up on the What's Next panel and asked Celestalon a few questions on talent changes.

Roll the Bones is a cool ability for rogues, but feels mandatory as Slice and Dice doesn't feel competitive. So in 7.1.5, that will get an upgrade to be a worthy alternative to Roll the Bones.

Traps are returning for all hunters because they are an iconic part of being a hunter.

Players can help Blizzard test new class changes by trying out underplayed specs, play the one you like, and put effort into it to ensure there is a variety of class data.

Artifact changes in 7.2 will include more traits on the small “bronze” traits, they will go up to 4, as well as new traits to put points into.

The solo challenges to unlock artifact appearances are designed to make your class shine.

Demon Hunters are doing well in Legion. Havoc has their niche and is strong in dungeon groups. For Vengeance, skilled ones do well in dungeons, but Blizzard is looking at inexperienced tanks being hard to heal, as well as the survivability difference when Dämonenstachel is up and not.

Website Interviews

Realm Maintenance: World of Warcraft Lead Software Engineer Patrick Magruder was interviewed by Realm Maintenance.. Blizzard had several engineering panels but none of them were streamed, so this provides a glimpse into the Engineering process:

One of the major reasons Legion's launch was smooth was that the team made sure objects for important quests could be interacted with by multiple people at the same time.

Stat and damage numbers are growing again; the Engineering team has fixed the scalability issue and there is no technical need for a squish (eg bosses can have more than 4 billion HP now), but a design issue remains if huge numbers dilute the impact for players.

Legion had several new systems which were fun and challenging to create, including Mythic+ which was a twist on the Challenge Mode system without loot, and the World Quest system which had additional compelxity with the Mobile App.

Vanion.Eu Matt Goss, one of World of Warcraft's Lead Game Designers, was interviewed by Vanion.

Unclear when 7.1.5 will be live, Nighthold will likely be live in January 2017.

In 7.1.5, you can complete a quest (eg Von Titanen berührt) to upgrade your legendary's ilvl to the next max ilvl cap.

There will be new legendaries in 7.2, these will automatically be ilvl 920, and some weaker ones are buffed in 7.1.5.

The top tier of Mythic+ rewards will keep increasing in ilvl as the expansion progresses to remain relevant.

The buildings you create on the Broken Shore in 7.2 will be region-wide (as opposed to Garrison buildings which are unique to each player). World should feel cohesive.

Argus is coming in 7.3 and will be part of the Legion expansion, not a separate one.

Streaming at Blizzcon

Over at the Darkmoon Faire, some other familiar faces were streaming during BlizzCon as well:

Kommentare

Kommentar von Nahai

Do we know if mythic+ items we already have (ex. If someone has some mythic 10 shoulders from a weekly cache) will be upgraded? Or just newly acquired ones when the patch goes live?

Kommentar von Flipinbricks

on 2016-11-07T08:22:56-06:00

Some of my favorite streamers and personalities. So much info on upcoming changes. I thought boomkins dps was still good but guess I was wrong and that legendary ilevel bump is um ...legendary :)

Kommentar von Thonster

on 2016-11-07T08:37:21-06:00

Cool to get confirmation on when Argus is dropping. I'm also curious how they could solve the stat inflation in the long run. Can they really just keep squishing every time?

Kommentar von CRASHhorde

on 2016-11-07T08:39:33-06:00

Interesting look on Argus!

Kommentar von Sithraldor

on 2016-11-07T08:40:42-06:00

Great recap.

Kommentar von Eneathrielia

on 2016-11-07T08:43:53-06:00

So... surv hunt, warlock and boomie will get a buff whilst warrior who is even more trash just needs "harmstring on GCD aka ruined class" tuning. Neat /sarcasm off

Kommentar von Trolol97

on 2016-11-07T08:49:04-06:00

really exited for argus

Kommentar von Vagiulis

on 2016-11-07T09:04:45-06:00

Desperate Prayer is going baseline

Praise the Old Gods Light!

Kommentar von Varuah

on 2016-11-07T09:05:59-06:00

Drain Soul making a return--now that is a skill I haven't heard of in many, many years...

Kommentar von yelf

on 2016-11-07T09:09:33-06:00

dam to much info for 1 day :(

Kommentar von icesickels

on 2016-11-07T09:10:39-06:00

The amount of content announced is amazing - cant wait.

Kommentar von ajhix36

on 2016-11-07T09:12:01-06:00

I really enjoyed this Blizzcon.

Kommentar von Sielinth

on 2016-11-07T09:13:39-06:00

I rank brewmaster and DH at the bottom in terms of ease of healing so I'm glad both are being looked at

brewmaster I think, personally speaking, it's mostly related to stagger and when to purify / ironskin myself. if you don't semi master stagger I think you're in a world of hurt. I don't know how or if making the whole process more intuitive would help but I hope that's something they look at

Kommentar von ceylina

on 2016-11-07T09:14:10-06:00

And still no confirmation they believe that BM hunters exist. Let's hope we get at least something and not more nerfs.

Kommentar von Kjflood

on 2016-11-07T09:18:05-06:00

wow, lots of info given and STILL more questions!

Great stuff Wowhead staff, great job on the wrap ups!

Kommentar von bass679

on 2016-11-07T09:25:19-06:00

glad to see the roadmap is well planned out for the rest of Legion!

Kommentar von Syrathis

on 2016-11-07T09:25:40-06:00

wowhead..by far the best source of a summary of anything world of warcraft.

Kommentar von Bladehawk

on 2016-11-07T09:28:32-06:00

Patient Sniper baseline? Excellent. Lone Wolf should be baseline, too (perhaps with a talent to be able to summon a pet, or even better, a mechanic that lets you summon a pet, but suffer a -18% damage debuff while it's out). That should make it clear that MM pets are intended only for leveling or tough solo content. Can't wait for 7.1.5 to hit the PTR!

Kommentar von SoulCreek

on 2016-11-07T09:33:53-06:00

I know they said no comments about Classic until after the blizzcon, but atleast something would be nice, you know? Just to be like "hey, we know you're out there"

Kommentar von Gormax

on 2016-11-07T09:44:14-06:00

This year's Blizzcon brought so many crazy informations- new Hearthstone expansion, Varian and Ragnaros in Hots (finally) and our trip to Argus. They really know how to build up hype, I am so excited to see these new things work in game!